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For non-profits trying to inspire public action, the Internet has proven to be a tool that is both powerful and difficult to master. At virtually no cost, the Internet can alert hundreds of thousands of prospective activists about an upcoming event or action. And at virtually no cost, those activists can turn around and respond by sending an email, signing a petition or committing to attend a real world event.

But the very fact that this type of communication is free means that there’s a lot of it already out there and your target audience is likely saturated with literally dozens of email calls to action each week. The same is true for the targets of your actions like government officials, some of whom now give little credence to the flood of email they receive. Every day, hundreds of well-meaning actions are drowned in the deluge of information that is the internet.

The actual sending of an email action may cost you little, but the time spent conceptualizing, writing, and programming it can have high financial and organizational costs. As people who care deeply about the work of progressive organizations, we want to see that effort rewarded – so we’re offering this guide.

If you’re new to internet activism, this strategy guide will act as a road map by which you can create your first action. The more experienced web activist will be able to compare past experiences with our best practices and will be sure to find at least a nugget or two of invaluable information.
Without the guidance of two inspiring experts in the field, this guide would not be possible. Eve Fox of M&R Strategic Services and Sue Citro of Craver Mathew Smith both lent valuable insight and guidance to this publication.

We expect this publication to evolve as more of you read and use it. Your feedback is welcome and we plan to use the comments we receive as a way to enrich and revise the strategies listed here.

PROS:
Activating the public using the internet is faster and so much cheaper than using direct mail. At a cost of nearly 75 cents per letter sent and a typical response rate of 1.5%, direct mail often costs about $50 per response. Internet Activism involves a small one-time cost of putting the action online and can reach thousands or hundreds of thousands of people at no additional cost. Internet Activism is environmentally friendly. Contacting the public with printed materials sends reams of paper directly to the trash. Internet Activism saves the resources used to print, ship and dispose of printed materials.

CONS:
Not everyone has email or access to a computer. Keep in mind who your target audience is and make sure those you are trying to reach have baseline internet skills before trying to create an internet action. The internet is an overused medium and it’s difficult to make an impression on an overstimulated user. Internet actions must be designed carefully and methodically to have any impact at all.

ENVISIONING YOUR ACTION

Every time you send an email to your target audience, you are either spending or building your credibility capital. Most users’ inboxes are fairly full, and as a rule, any mass-produced email is by default unwelcome. That means that an email whose content neither offends nor edifies the recipient will by default be an expenditure of your valuable credibility capital. Keep in mind that even organizations with a tremendous amount of offline credibility can very quickly expend their online credibility capital with one or two uninspired email communications.

If, however, the contact you make educates, inspires, or, most importantly, empowers the recipient you can actually build your credibility capital. For example, a group like MoveOn has given its members such concrete and empowering ways to act that members actually look forward to receiving what they’ve come to see as their next crucial “assignment.”

For this reason, it is critical that your action has been clearly conceived both strategically and technically. Following these simple guidelines can help.

CLEARLY DEFINE YOUR ACTION

Your audience won’t be clear about what you want them to do unless you are — and without a straightforward directive they will ignore you. It is critical, therefore, that the point of your action is specific and clear. For example, it’s best to ask the activist/recipient to do only one simple thing in each email — making too many requests at once is likely to confuse and overwhelm the reader and will often result in them failing to take even one of the actions. Even if the underlying motivation of your activism campaign is to raise awareness about your organization and its many different focus areas, narrow your action to something very specific. A focused and specific action will draw attention to your organization as a side-effect.

You’ll know your action has been properly conceived if you can answer the following questions:

1. What is the problem (or solution) you are highlighting?
2. What are you asking the user to do about it?
3. How will you and the user know if the action has been successful?
4. Who, if anyone, is the target of your action (e.g. lawmakers, corporate officials, media outlets)?

ADD URGENCY TO YOUR ACTION

Internet users have short attention spans. If they don’t act immediately on your email, it will probably fall to the bottom of their inbox. And unless the action you are proposing seems urgent, users will not act immediately. Many organizations work on long-term projects with no clear end in sight, so finding the urgency can be a challenge. If you find yourself in this position, try to identify a particular milestone or sub-goal that must be acted upon now.

EMPOWER YOUR USERS

People take action on the internet because they hope to make a difference. We all know making a difference in the world is not always as easy as clicking a mouse, but the best actions make users feel that their effort actually has an effect. Sending a fax to a senator the day before a crucial vote, writing a letter to a key news outlet that affects the coverage of a big story or being part of a boycott that changes corporate policy are good examples of the types of things users like to do. Vague actions like signing up as a future activist or signing untargeted petitions will not seem worth the time to many users.

Now is also a good time to plan how you will follow up on an action. Research shows that internet activists are much more interested in knowing the outcome of an issue they’ve participated in than offline activists (who sign a paper petition or donate money through the mail, etc.) Keeping your activists informed is also one of the keys to building a solid relationship with them — one in which they trust you to be a credible and reliable source of information and actions, and in which you can count on them to respond to your requests for action. An empowered user who has been contacted after the action and been informed of how he or she has made a difference is much more likely to act on your behalf again. And you don’t need an outright win to find a positive you can let your users know about. Just the fact that people have acted can be presented as a small victory.

CHOOSE THE BEST METHOD FOR COMMUNICATING WITH THE ACTION’S TARGET

Most actions have a target – a person, group or corporation who you want your users to influence. It may be a Senator who’s still on the fence on an important issue or a CEO responsible for environmental degradation. It’s crucial to know how your members can best reach these audiences.

Lawmakers – Lawmakers tend to prioritize correspondence they get from the public like this (in descending order of importance): phone calls, mail, faxes, individual emails, single email petition. In addition lawmakers will want confirmation that the correspondence came from one of his or her constituents. If contacting lawmakers, activists should always include an address.

Corporations – Corporations are often more sensitive to anything that might tarnish their image. A relatively small number of individual communications can cause big concern. Emails to the public relations department work well. Phone calls are even better, but require more effort on the part of the activist. And faxes can help make a point, since a flood of activist faxes can easily tie up all of an office’s available machines, forcing them to recognize you.

Media – Media outlets are in the habit of checking their sources, so it’s a good idea to include phone numbers when contacting them, particularly if you’re asking your activists to send Letters to the Editor about your campaign issue to their local papers.

GIVE YOUR ACTION THE CHANCE TO GO VIRAL

To say an action has gone viral means that it has been passed from peer-to-peer, growing in its reach well beyond those who originally received it. The goal of almost any action is to go viral. If it does, it will increase exposure for your cause, grow your email list (free of charge) for future actions, and vastly increase your chances for press coverage offline. It’s not uncommon for a viral message sent out to 30,000 users to reach 400,000 before it finishes making its rounds on the internet.

The original messages to go viral on the internet were largely humorous and meaningless or they were urgent hoaxes. Dancing hamsters or ridiculous chain letters from Bill Gates got millions of views. It’s hard to predict what will go viral, but one thing we do know is that people like passing things on to their friends as long as they don’t feel they are advertising to their friends.

Seeing the enormous potential of peer-to-peer marketing, corporations tried to create their own viral messages. But because these were essentially advertisements, they flopped. Non-profits, however, have found that certain messages can go viral. Viral activism messages do have a purpose but they are more educational than advertorial so people are more likely to pass them along to friends. The more they amuse, alert, and teach the more likely they will be to go viral. The more they preach, beg and advertise the more likely they will be to fizzle out. Here are some things you can do to increase your action’s ability to go viral.

1. Use eye-catching creative elements – Your action should be illustrated with exciting and inspiring graphics. The internet is full of text. Images can express so much more so much faster. A logo that encapsulates your message or an illustration that helps people immediately grasp the problem can be invaluable. Make sure to stay away from imagery that looks corporate.

   Say it with Imagery

   As a campaign develops, your organization likely pulls in and distills dozens of complex ideas from dozens of sources. The goal is to take the complex ins and outs of your issue and make your vision understandable and compelling. A good creative team can help with the all important step of distilling your message. The ultimate distillation of a campaign is often expressed not in words but in pictures.

   Take the above logo we designed for Students for a Free Tibet. Their fight to stop China’s Olympic bid got a big boost when this image of a monk handcuffed by the Olympic rings hit the streets. It was used at protests around the world and picked up by major news outlets in Europe, South America and the United States. Sure it got people’s attention — but its real value was that once it got people to take notice, it told them a compelling story in just a few seconds. Though the Chinese bid ultimately prevailed, the handcuffed monk has come to symbolize opposition to China’s whitewashed image as a member of the international community.

2. Use humor, urgency or a combination of the two – people feel good about making their friends laugh. If you can add an element of humor to your action, you will see its pass along rate increase (see section below on flash for more about humor). Some messages do not lend themselves to humor, of course and a sense of urgency can be equally effective.
3. Make the message educational – sending an alert to a friend should be about bettering that friend’s life, not just advancing the action. Whenever the message can teach users something that they think their friends would like to learn as well, they will be more likely to pass it on. Peerto-peer marketing is all about information sharing, so make your information worth sharing.
4. If possible, use flash – packaging your message in a brief internet cartoon increases your viral potential exponentially. It’s the easiest way to add a humorous element to your message. It’s also the best way to turn your message into a narrative, packaging your issue into an easy-to-understand story. These stories are stories that end with a question. Will it be a happy ending or a sad one? A flash movie says that question can only be answered by the user, thus casting the user in the role of hero. Doing so makes the action satisfying and thus worth passing on to friends. Flash animations also will be a first introduction for many users to streaming fully animated cartoons with sound. This novelty alone inspires people to want to pass it on to a friend.
   
   We believe in Flash animations and we’ve seen them bring stunning results to our clients. There are some who are concerned that Flash distracts from their message. Put your action in a simple text-only email, they believe, and people will respond. Add any distractions like graphics and sound and you’ll lose people.
   
   In our experience, there is some truth to the simple email theory. When an action is in all of the headlines, at the forefront of activists‘ minds and they are just looking for a way to make an impact, a text-only email can be the most direct route to action. But many organizations work on important issues that are simply not the lead story on CNN. For these actions, Flash allows you to tell a story in a way that cannot be done with email. After watching a 30-second cartoon, activists will have a visual framework

   The Power of Flash

   Check out the numbers from the action that Amnesty International promoted with Flash: Amnesty put out a spoof of the famous DeBeers shadow hands ad to a list of 30,000 activists. To expose the brutality of the diamond trade. This message about a previously obscure issue was so compelling that viewership quickly went from 30,000 to 150,000. Fifty-thousand users took action while 14,000 new users were compelled to join Amnesty’s action list. Then the animation moved off the web and onto a CD-ROM which was distributed to the House of Representatives. Not long after, a Clean Diamonds Bill was passed.
   
   These numbers are impressive, but by no means an exception. Those actions that are well-suited to the medium can become explosive once Flash is introduced.

CHECK OUT THE NUMBERS FROM THIS ACTION THAT AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL PROMOTED WITH FLASH:

Amnesty put out a spoof of the famous DeBeers shadow hands ad to a list of 30,000 activists. To expose the brutality of the diamond trade. This message about a previously obscure issue was so compelling that viewership quickly went from 30,000 to 150,000. Fifty-thousand users took action while 14,000 new users were compelled to join Amnesty’s action list. Then the animation moved off the web and onto a CD-ROM which was distributed to the House of Representatives. Not long after, a Clean Diamonds Bill was passed.

These numbers are impressive, but by no means an exception. Those actions that are well-suited to the medium can become explosive once Flash is introduced.

See our flash activism movies.

PUTTING YOUR ACTION ONLINE

Once you’ve decided exactly what it is you want your activists to do and have an idea of how you want them to do it, it’s time to create the actual action tool. The key to an effective tool is that it should 1) be easy to use, 2) be rewarding, 3) collect and generate the right data.

MAKE IT VERY EASY TO USE

When a user decides to “click here” from your action email and go to your action tool, he or she has agreed to give you no more than a minute or two of valuable time to make a difference. That’s all you’ll get. So the action page must immediately make clear what you have to do to take the action. Follow these principles:

• Don’t put your website navigation on your action page. Though it may be tempting to have a Home and About Us button on the page, it will only distract users. Offer these items after the user has taken the action.
• Keep all activities on one page. Don’t force users to click through several pages to take the action.
• Number the steps the user has to take and clearly mark them (e.g. Step 1 of 3 = Read the Letter)
• Step 1 should be the action itself. If the action is sending a letter, put the letter in an editable text field. If the action is signing a petition display the petition here. In this stage the user reviews what he or she is signing on to and, if applicable, customizes it.
• Step 2 should collect information on the user. Collect only the information you absolutely need. Users expect to fill out name, zip code, address and email address. When asking for an email address, clearly state your privacy policy. (see section: Collect and Generating the Right Data for more information)
• Step 4 should be a submit button.
• Step 5 should live on the Thank You Page but is critical. The step gives the user the opportunity to enter the email addresses of other friends who may be interested in the action. This is a key element in making your action viral. Preferably, have the email come from the friend, not from you. Many email packages allow you to do this automatically.

Keep the design of the page simple and clean. Everything should focus on taking the action.

In some cases, the message that drove the user to the action page (an email or flash movie) may not have completely explained the issue and there is a need for even further information. In that case, the best practice is to box off the explanatory text so that it is prominent but not confused with the action. It’s a good idea to make the explanatory text very brief and simple and provide a link to a fuller explanation at the bottom of the brief description. That way, users can get the gist of the action without having to read through more than one very short paragraph of text, or just skip directly to taking action if they prefer.

MAKE IT REWARDING

When we think of asking someone to do something for us, we usually think of it as assigning them a chore. And taking an action can certainly feel like one. If there is sufficient reward for it, however, an assignment of a chore can feel more like a gift. If a user comes to see your action as a gift, he or she is much more likely to want to pass that gift onto a friend. And that peer-to-peer exchange is crucial to your action’s success.

There are many types of positive feedback you can give a user. “Premiums” like a screensaver or a quick animation on the thank you page can often make the action seem worth it. Seeing the impact of their effort is even more rewarding. Using Flash, exciting new tools are being developed to illustrate a user’s impact. For instance, the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids has recently created a tool in which users who take action are allowed to light a candle, attach a loved one’s name to it and then place it on an ever-growing online memorial. Allowing the user to leave his or her mark on the web is a small gift, but can feel very significant.

Of course, the greatest reward is seeing that your efforts have been successful. Make sure to contact your activists with updates on the campaign that they have chosen to be a part of. Doing so will insure that your next action is eagerly awaited.

COLLECT AND GENERATE THE RIGHT DATA

Just getting a user to take your action does not necessarily mean you’ve accomplished anything. Actions are really about collecting and generating data — and incomplete data is useless. Trying to harvest too much data on the other hand, will make a user wary of you intentions or will present a user with too much work. So collect and generate only the data needed for your action and organization. As well, promising your activists that you will not trade or sell their names without permission is vital.

1. Identify the User: To properly identify a user as a unique and legitimate individual, you must ask for their: name, email address, mailing address and zip code. When programming your forms, make it easy on the user by using the standard names for fields. Doing this will allow users to use the auto fill on their browser, a feature many of them rely on.
2. Collect the User’s Message: Although your action can include a standardized message, allowing the user to customize it will lend it legitimacy in their eyes. Thousands of emails that all say the same exact thing are less effective than thousands saying the same thing but worded differently.
3. Allow the User to Opt-in for Future Actions: A simple check box should ask the user if he or she wants to be added to your mailing list for future actions.

Possessing all of the data mentioned above will allow you to generate the information you’ll need to make your action a success. It will send legitimate emails from confirmed individuals, allow you to build demographic profiles of your activists and build your lists for future actions. It also allows you to further personalize your email communications to your activists provided you have the right software. But, not all applications offer this feature. For example, instead of using a generic greeting like “Dear friend”, you can use this information to start your email off with a “Dear Amy.”

ALERTING YOUR ACTIVISTS

Contacting your activists to drive them to your online actions will usually be done through email. Like you, most of your users are flooded with emails and will have little time or attention for the non-personal ones they receive. Your goal is to get your email through two sets of filters: the first is the automatic spam filter on most mail servers, the second is the filter in your activist’s head that tries to discard useless or overly complex messages.

GETTING AROUND THE SPAM FILTERS

Most mail servers and many email programs will sort out email that seems to be spam. As these filters get more complex, so do the means of passing through them and a complete discussion of spam filters goes beyond the scope of this guide. The following rules scratch the surface of this complex matter:

1. Make sure it passes most filter’s validation requirements. A good way to do this is to ask users to add your email address to their address book.
2. Keep the size of an html email above 20k and below 40k. Too little and it gets filtered out, too much and it’s annoying to users.
3. Don’t use the words “Click Here” anywhere in your email. If you feel the need to have those words, you must disguise it. Try something like “C*lick Here.”
4. Try to avoid using question marks and exclamation points in your subject line

An excellent article is available on clickz.com that covers this topic much more in depth.

CREATING A MESSAGE THAT INSPIRES ACTION

MAKE IT EASY TO READ

Internet readers tend to have really short attention spans so it helps to present things in a very accessible, easy to read, attention-grabbing format. Write in short sentences and use short paragraphs, no more than 2-4 lines each. Put spaces between them. Easy to digest headlines can be very useful. They allow people to grasp the substance of the page by skimming and then dig deeper into your text where you’ve caught their interest.

WRITE IN PLAIN ENGLISH

A good rule of thumb is to always put things in plain layman’s English (many people even recommend trying to write at no higher than an 8th grade level.) While a lot of the people on your list may know what SB 235 is, etc., if you’re trying to build your list, chances are that those potential activists/members you’re hoping to connect with won’t.

It’s always best to avoid bill numbers and policy language if at all possible. The best place for that info is in the letter you write for your activists to send to whichever decision-maker you’re targeting with your action. But for all the public-facing materials, it’s best to be simple, concise and easy to understand.

MAKE IT PERSONAL

Start off with a casual greeting (“Hi Anne” or “Dear Anne”) and end with a closing, something as simple as “Thanks for your help. Sincerely, Martin.” This tone can go a long way to softening your appeal and helping the people on your list feel that they have a connection with you, which will ultimately help your open rates.

MAKE THE CONNECTION TO YOUR READER’S LIFE

The thing that’s going to make someone take action or sign up for your list is if your email or your ask matters to them. Whatever your issue is, try to draw the connection to the recipient’s life. Why does this interest them, how does this issue affect them? Keep this in mind when you’re writing. It’s good to lead with this, but even if you don’t lead with it, be sure to spell it out loud and clear.

MAKE YOUR EMAILS FROM “SOMEONE”

Whether you’re writing your organization’s emails or someone else is, make sure that they’re signed by a real person. People are more likely to open an email if it’s from someone’s name, not just from an organizational address. It can also be useful to include a picture of the signer in the email if you’re able to send html emails. Making the email from a real person helps build a valuable relationship with your list members which will increase your open rates and response rates over time. People really get used to receiving emails from one person and often when a list manager switches, the organization will receive a lot of emails from members, wanting to know what happened to Cindy or John, or whomever they were used to getting emails from...

If you’re writing a newsletter, start it off with a personal note. Your list members should get to know you and realize that this email is coming from you, a real person. It will make them more likely to open and read your email, especially if they come to know and LIKE you.

DON’T FORGET ABOUT THE SUBJECT LINE

Subject lines are key and will determine whether or not people will open your email in the first place. You want to pique people’s interest but also let them know what they’re opening. If you have more detailed information that relates to the recipient in some way, be sure to include it in the subject line. For instance, use their first name if you have it and if your software allows you to send personalized emails (meaning it will insert the proper first name, etc., into the subject line for you). If you’re writing about an issue in their town or state, be sure to include the town or state name in the subject line to let them know this matters to them.

KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE

It’s important to keep in mind who you’re writing to. Are they parents, scientists, students, etc? Be sure you write in a manner that they can grasp. Avoid policy wonk language whenever possible. It can often be helpful to pretend you’re writing to your own mom or a friend when you sit down to write an action alert, etc. Would your mom understand it? Would it catch or keep her interest? If you wouldn’t send the email to your mom, chances are you should rewrite.

HTML VS. PLAIN TEXT

The verdict is in on this debate and it seems that more people prefer to receive html emails. You can do a lot more with them, add images, bold text, etc. and they’re easier to read and more visually interesting than plain text. However, many people still cannot receive html emails so it’s best to offer both options and allow people to pick and choose which version they’d prefer via a check box on your action page or sign up page. Ideally, your software provider, will have what’s called a “sniffer” this enables it to “sniff” out whether or not each recipient can receive html — if they can receive it, it will send the html version, if not, it will send the plain text version you’ve prepared (it takes only a little more time to create the two versions). However, if you are going to do HTML, try not to make the top of the page too graphically heavy. Too many images and bright colors distract people from your message and can also be a turn off to people who have slow connections since the images will take a long time to load.

STRUCTURE

Structure your action alert or newsletter according to your organizational priorities. Make your action alert or whatever you feel is most important the lead article and then place things in order of decreasing importance. If you’re writing an action alert, it’s important to give people an option to take action early on in the email and then again closer to the end of the email, after they’ve read more about the issue.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT MOMENT

Send your action alerts when people will have time to read them. Generally people are more receptive at the beginning of the week. Studies have shown that emails sent on Monday or Tuesday are more effective than those sent on Thursday or Friday. Try to avoid sending important alerts at holiday time or when people are likely to be on vacation.

Despite the fact that some users find HTML emails annoying (they take longer to download, many have been designed to be loud and ugly), they offer an opportunity to put a many of the best elements of your web site into users’ inboxes. An html email is essentially a web page that you send through email. Although it differs from a web page in that the content should be more like a newsletter, it does allow you to brand your campaign with colors images and fonts just as you do on your web site. With the exception of Flash and streaming video, if you can produce it on the web, you can produce it in an HTML email.

This HTML email we created for the Environmental Integrity Project allowed the organization to reach out to users about important land issues. By putting imagery of the beautiful land they are aiming to protect, they inspire users in a way that plain text never could.

LEARN FROM YOUR ACTIONS

If you’ve followed the steps above, you’ve applied the valuable lessons that others working in similar fields have learned through years of trial and error. But nobody’s issue is exactly your issue and nobody’s methods will be exactly right for you. Within the parameters give above, it’s worth experimenting. Pilot messages with your members. Get feedback. Try sending out a few versions of an email for each action. See what gets the best response. And send us your results. By learning from each other, we can become a stronger activist community and a more powerful force in advancing the progressive agenda and the public interest.